Planning for Disaster p.

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Planning for Disaster p.
Newspapers tell Nexpo audience about their mutual-assistance
agreement, which kicks in when production is halted
BOSTON GLOBE EXECUTIVE Robert D. Sylvester was nearing the end of his Nexpo presentation about the detailed mutual-assistance agreement the Globe and the Providence (R.I.) Journal have in case disaster halts production at either paper.
On the screen was a photo of the "emergency kit" of Journal section fronts, mastheads and column heads the Globe keeps on hand if it needs to produce the Providence paper.
"You'll notice these are the Providence materials," he explained a little sheepishly. "When I was putting this presentation together, I couldn't find the backup copy of the Globe emergency kit.
"I think that's quite telling . . . as to how emergency planning goes," said Sylvester, manager of publishing systems for the Globe.
Indeed, the disaster planning seminar at Nexpo began with a similar caveat from moderator Michael Stern, production manager of Syracuse Newspapers Inc. in New York.
"Please keep in mind there is no such thing as a perfect plan," Stern said.
Nevertheless, the recent spate of natural and man-made disasters that have struck newspapers have accelerated disaster planning around the country.
Consider the experience of just one chain, Knight-Ridder.
"Knight-Ridder [newspapers] faced five disasters in the past four years: the riots in Los Angeles, the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, and the Bay-area earthquake," said Ernest L. King, manager for environmental affairs at Knight-Ridder.
Before two of the worst natural disasters?Hurricane Andrew and the California earthquake?both the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News and the Miami Herald had extensive disaster plans ready.
Yet both papers also were helped, in the end, by luck.
The hurricane at the last moment veered away from the Herald's downtown Miami office, and the earthquake left Mercury News facilities with no serious damage.
"As we reflected on the events of October 1989, however, we knew we had dodged a major bullet," said Mercury News vice president?operations Jerry Polk.
The paper ordered a geological and structural analysis of its site. One result was that the paper improved the anchoring of much of its heavy equipment.
Miami, too, learned the importance of employee communications as it took literally days to contact all of the Herald's 2,500 employees, said Armando Gonzalez, director of engineering for the newspaper.
Seeing the experience of other papers is one reason the Boston Globe and the Providence Journal began in 1991 to develop their mutual-assistance plan.
The two papers were a good fit, the Globe's Sylvester said.
"We are both broadsheet newspapers with nearly identical deadlines, comparable typefaces and spare press capacity. We're close enough to one another to get to the other's site quickly but far enough away so we might not suffer the same natural, power or communications disaster," Sylvester said.
The plan cannot be invoked in the event of a labor dispute, he noted.
Both papers have agreed the "host" paper will print and distribute for the "victim" paper a 16-page, black-and-white newspaper.
The Hartford (Conn.) Courant's disaster plan is recognized as among the industry's most comprehensive.
"Plan," however, might not be the right word.
"I look at it more like a reference guide than a set of plans," said Paul J. Reynolds, the paper's director of facilities and engineering.
It is virtually impossible?and not terribly useful?to imagine all the possible disaster scenarios, he said.
Instead, newspapers should compile information such as the phone numbers of key employees and equipment and service vendors.
The Courant's computerized plan?a copy of which Reynolds carries in his automobile trunk?includes such useful information as a schematic for the phone switchboard, instructions for starting the emergency generator and maps to alternate printing and newsroom sites.
Perhaps the most important element of the plan, however, is a series of guidelines for implementing the plan itself.
"The biggest problem we've seen is knowing when you have a problem," Reynolds said. "The biggest problem in planning for a disaster is knowing when the red flags are going up."
Hartford's plan uses a simple traffic light system. If one press is lost for up to a half hour, it is considered a green-light situation and no emergency action is taken; if a press goes out for an hour, however, the press manager is alerted under the yellow-light condition.
Loss of a press for more than 90 minutes constitutes a red-light condition that necessitates getting a director and vice president involved.